Developer, Gamer, Food Destroyer

I’m doing this a little earlier compared to last week – I actually got it in during a Friday! Great album this week, it is Annuals’ Such Fun album released in 2008.

Here is the description of Annuals, straight from their Wikipedia:

Annuals is a six-piece indie-pop outfit from Raleigh and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The band was started by Adam Baker in 2003 as a side project of the still active sister band Sunfold, formerly known as Sedona and headed up by lead guitarist Kenny Florence.

Ace Fu Records signed Annuals in the fall of 2005 and then released their debut LP Be He Me on October 17, 2006. The members of Annuals are also all deeply involved in their own music-business venture,Terpsikhore Records, which is owned by benefactor J.K. Horne. Terpsikhore released Annuals’ first demo, titled “Lay Down Dry”, in the summer of 2005, as well as the Git’ Got EP in the summer of 2006.

Annuals appeared as the #25 entry in Pitchfork Media’s “Infinite Mixtape” series with their song “Brother”, and have also made appearances on Spin.com, AOLMusicIndie.com, Stereogum, I Guess I’m Floating, the Underrated, Brooklyn Vegan, and EarFarm (among others) – earning them a newfound reputation for being a “blog band.” They are frequently compared to the Arcade Fire, Animal Collective, and Broken Social Scene and are known for their intense live shows.

They made their national television debut on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and recently came back in October of 2008 for a second show, playing the title track from Such Fun, “Confessor.”

The January 24, 2007 episode of Veronica Mars (“Show Me the Monkey”) used a large portion of the song “Fair”.

Annuals’ sophomore album, Such Fun, was released on October 7, 2008.

Here’s the streaming album, take a listen and leave a comment if you enjoy it!

Recently, I was approached by Verne from DailyChallenge to put together a video they had shot of themselves completing the challenge for November 28, 2008 – “Walk down the street with a sign that says, ‘Donate a High Five'”. Here’s the description and the result:

On November 28, 2008, the Daily Challenge team set out with the challenge to “Walk down the street with a sign that says ‘Donate a High Five'”. Naturally, we had to do it. Here’s how it went down.

Alright, so I kinda missed Friday by 30 minutes, but it’s okay, I had a busy day. This week, Headlights’ 2008 album, Some Racing, Some Stopping.

Here is their description from Wikipedia:

Headlights is an American indie rock band from Champaign, Illinois. The band was formed following the dissolution of Absinthe Blind, when members Erin Fein, Seth Fein and Brett Sanderson formed a band named Orphans. It was only when Tristan Wraight started writing songs with Fein that Headlights was formed.

Headlights released The Enemies EP in 2004, and followed that up in 2006 with a split single with Canadian indie rock band The Most Serene Republic. Later in 2006, the band released their debut album, Kill Them with Kindness, which has received generally positive reviews. Nick Sanborn (of Decibully) and John Owen (of fellow Champaign group Shipwreck) joined the group during the summer of 2007. In 2008, their third album, Some Racing, Some Stopping, was released.

I stumbled upon this article from Digg. It discusses DC Comics and their decision to kill off Bruce Wayne in the coming issues of the Batman comics. It cites the following reason in its decision:

Comic book companies, like record labels, have found that the death of a big star is great for sales. When Superman was killed by Doomsday in 1992, DC saw a Cobain-like surge in sales, and the issue was the best-selling in franchise history. However, unlike Biggie Smalls (but very much like Tupac) the character was resurrected. Captain America saw a similar bump after a sniper shot him down in New York last year.

I think this is a horrible marketing ploy, but I guess if it’s going to generate sales for you, I can’t really complain. But then again, if they gave Batman enough time to plan, it would be discovered that he never really died and it was just a decoy.

Kind of a shame that they’re only doing this to appeal to the masses, rather than creating a meaningful and memorable story arc. Shame on you DC Comics.

Another week, another album! This week, I’m sharing Bowerbird’s album – Hymns For a Dark Horse.

Here’s a description straight from Wikipedia:

Bowerbirds are a nu-folk band from Raleigh, North Carolina. The band members are Beth Tacular, Phil Moore and Mark Paulson. Their debut album, Hymns For a Dark Horse (Burly Time Records, 2007), received favourable reviews. Bowerbirds have toured in support of The Mountain Goats, with John Darnielle referring to the band as his “new favorite band in forever”.

Hymns For a Dark Horse was released in 2007, and if you are interested in purchasing it, you can find it here. And here’s the stream:

Welcome to the newest segment on JonLim.ca – Featured Album Fridays! I’ve decided to take every Friday and utilize it for something useful – sharing music that you may not have heard before.

This week – DeVotchKa’s How It Ends album. I selected it because I heard How It Ends from the Last Day commercial for Gears of War 2 and decided to check out their other music. Here’s a description of DeVotchKa straight from Wikipedia:

DeVotchKa is a four piece multi-instrumental and vocal ensemble that fuses Romani, Greek, Slavic, Bolero, Mariachi (and many more styles) music with American punk and folk roots. They take their name from Anthony Burgess’ Nadsat word for “young girl,” which is itself derived from the Russian word (девочка) of the same meaning. Based in Denver, Colorado, the quartet is made up of Nick Urata, who sings and plays theremin, guitar, bouzouki, piano, and trumpet; Tom Hagerman, who plays violin, accordion, and piano; Jeanie Schroder, who sings and plays sousaphone and double bass; and Shawn King, who plays percussion and trumpet.

The How It Ends album was released in 2004, and for those interested, you can purchase it here. Or you can just stream it below!

While surfing Digg for some news, I ran accross this story about an Ex-MPAA and IFPA Anti-Piracy Enforcer who was shot dead and is being investigated for the possibility of it being an assassination. This is a terrible story, and yet here are a few comments from the article:

This horrible, pathetic excuse for a human being was actively working to stop me downloading (stealing) copyrighted content. He deserves to die!!

It’s great that he died! I hope he took a long, long time to croak and he was in extreme amounts of pain. If only members of his family were there to see him take the bullet and get spattered in his blood! I hope they also die horrible, slow and painful deaths. Especially his crazy wife and horrid sons and daughters!

This weezil deserves to die for stopping me stealing stuff! good riddance, I hope you rot in hell for eternity. Good riddance you slimy prick!

unfortunate accident cough, but…. you anti-copyright people are pushing your limits with the people. Trying to turn the internet into a police state who do you people think you are?

Now, I’m not sure where some of these people get off making these sort of comments about someone who was going after commercial pirates, aka the people who produce fakes for profit. That’s not you, person who is downloading for personal use!

Recently, I’ve discovered that Vimeo has transitioned into a subscription-based revenue model, or as they call it – Vimeo Plus. I had briefly considered supporting the site that had been so good to me for so long, until I found out they only allow accounts from the US to upgrade. Fantastic, time to migrate to a new service!

Viddyou is a free and premium personal video service focused on offering the best quality in video, privacy control, and overall ease of use.

There are a few restrictions: HD conversion isn’t fantastic, 250MB limit per upload, and a max of 5 minutes recording time. For a free account, that’s not bad, and it’s only $34.95 per year if I wish to remove those limits.

EDIT: Found a great new feature – under ‘Community’, you can start your own community to post specific videos to. We’ve separated some sensitive videos this way and it seems to be working quite well! Awesome feature!

Reading articles like this is rather disheartening. Telecom companies (In North America) are focusing their efforts on rapidly expanding services and capabilities of mobile devices.

Can you really blame them?

No, but I can say this: stop ignoring the development of the existing infrastructure. Broadband access and speeds in particular have been rather stagnant for as long as I remember, the point being hammered home by this picture – depicting the speed of broadband all over the world, sorted by country:

Why is it that countries which have the best cell phones manage to have the best services for those cell phones and the best broadband internet speeds as well? Why is Japan and South Korea planning to roll out 4G networks that promise true mobile broadband, and we can’t even get 3G right?

Step up your game, North American telecoms, for you are being left behind.